There Is A Trojan Asteroid Near Us In Space

“These objects are difficult to find from Earth, simply because they’re not very big and they’re pretty faint, and they’re close to the Sun as seen from Earth. But we can find them from space, and future satellites will likely find some more. We think that there are others which will be very close to the Earth and have motions that make them relatively easy to reach. So, they could be potential targets to go to with spacecraft.”
 — Astronomer Christian Veillet, who works with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, on the discovery of 2010 TK7, a 300-meter-wide asteroid orbiting the sun alongside our planet “like a dog on a leash.” Such asteroids, common around Jupiter, Neptune and Mars, are called “Trojan asteroids.” So while scientists says 2010 TK7 poses no danger to us, and it would be very cool to go to on a spacecraft one day, we should definitely not open up the gates and invite it into our atmosphere.